NEA Comments on K-12 Common Core Standards Draft

WASHINGTON - March 11, 2010 -

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) today presented the draft kindergarten through 12th grade level Common Core State Standards documents produced on behalf of 48 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is working to produce a common core of voluntary state standards across grades. The K-12 Standards would cover English/language arts, math, and eventually science.

The following statement can be attributed to NEA President Dennis Van Roekel:“NEA is pleased to support this draft of the Common Core State Standards. It reflects efforts to make substantial revisions to improve the previous draft and demonstrates the responsiveness of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) staff to input from stakeholders. Two NEA members serve on project committees and an advisory group of NEA teachers has provided input on several occasions. The attentiveness of CCSSI leaders to the ideas of teachers provides real classroom grounding for the learning progressions and ideas in the standards.

“The effort to draft common standards with input from a wide group of organizations and education experts is proceeding well. While there are still areas that can be improved, these standards are beginning to articulate education goals that encompass high level, complex knowledge and skills. Broad goals such as these have the potential to promote flexible, rich instruction and sound assessments that support learning for all students. They can serve as a core framework for language arts, subject-based literacy, and mathematics curricula in great public schools.

“NEA looks forward to future work on standards for the other content areas as well as standards for preparing students for various career paths. A wide set of standards can insure a complete education for all students and increase the likelihood that students will persist in school and attain a high school diploma.

“NEA also advocates the continued development of the standards through a process that allows for thoughtful input and wide vetting. Such an important effort should not be rushed if the policies that build on it are to be sound and effective.”

The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional organization, representing3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.

[Poll name]

Email A Friend

Send This article to:

Enter the e-mail address of the recipient. Multiple addresses need to be separated by commas (200 characters max).

Add your message (optional):

Enter your e-mail address (required):

NEA respects your privacy! Your e-mail address, and that of your recipient, will be used only in the case of transmission errors and to let the recipient know who sent the story. The information will not be used for any other purpose.